


All Just for the Civet Coffee

by yakalskovich



Series: Hannigram in Cuba vignettes [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: #ItsStillBeautiful, #ItsStillBeautiful Fest, Kopi Luwak, M/M, rare coffee, what they did during corona
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25399810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yakalskovich/pseuds/yakalskovich
Summary: In unsual times, you can do unusual things, try unusual tastes and yet get home unscathed...
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: Hannigram in Cuba vignettes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845946
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32
Collections: ItsStillBeautiful 2020





	All Just for the Civet Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> Written for #ItsStillBeautiful fest 2020, follows on my post-canon vignette ['Trick or Treat'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12578600) (which you don't need to know for this one, just that they live in Cuba) & inspired by my roommate Alvie and me actually having kopi luwak, with a nod to that in shape of her apron...

“It’s frivolous,” Will had said when Hannibal suggested the idea, early in the pandemic, as they were sitting in their usual corner of the harbour café, with the dogs.

“It’s not frivolous when we’re actually helping,” Hannibal had said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Dr. Morales positively begged me to come along, helping to make up a respectable contingent for the brigade from this town. And yes, of course, it means a change of the menu.”

“It’s dangerous,” Will had pointed out. He’d peered out at the fishing boats at anchor, many of which he’d repaired at some stage. This had become home.

“The world is busy with the sickness, and our former homeland has been taken over by morons since we left,” Hannibal says. “Consider this, Will: - when will a better opportunity to safely leave and return present itself? Nobody will pay any attention to Cuban doctors. Cuban doctors always turn up in poor countries when there’s a problem. They’re famous for it.”

***

They would of course have gone anywhere they were sent; Will almost suspected that Hannibal had hoped to slip in and out of Italy for what might well be his last time, sailing under a Cuban flag into heavily stricken Lombardy, so to speak. But it was Indonesia. Their small party of doctors, nurses and helpers from their hometown (as they thought of it now) was welcomed by harried officials, dumped into a deserted tourist resort and then carted to work in the megacity’s hospitals every day for an almost unlimited amount of hours, as there was fearfully much to do. The country was hit hard, and the conditions were harrowing, to say the least.

But Hannibal was Hannibal. This was the man who had made a library of his prison cell, who chose his friends and lovers among those that hunted him, who created high art at a desperate last stand. Of course he would toil for ten days among the dead and dying, and then laze in the tropical sun for two days, basking as if it was a luxury holiday. It tended to overwhelm Will, whose empathy got the better of him and made him acerbic, but Hannibal knew how to get him to relax.

And there was a dog. Of course there was a dog. Will missed their own dogs at home in Cuba, big fluffy Keisha and her smaller friends, but there was a mongrel who hung around the compound, begging scraps from the doctors as he used to from the tourists, one of those feisty little fox dogs common in the region. The dog allowed Will to relax after all the day’s death and pain, he gave him a reason to get out of bed on their free mornings, and to roam the streets around the compound. Roaming was good; it meant that when Hannibal did kill, he wouldn’t do it too close to home. And Will was certain he would -- what point in travelling halfway around the world and not sampling the locals? But this way, it might be that fruit vendor who mercilessly beat every hungry urchin that she caught creeping too close to her wares, and not the hospital administrator who kept getting on their nerves by making them sign things by hand in triplicate.

That’s how he got the coffee.

He was out early with the dog on a day off, following where the little mongrel led him, and where he led him was a shop that smelled interesting, run by a middle-aged Chinese couple. Will browsed while the dog sniffed on the large bags stacked outside, and found a few things that might interest Hannibal: lotus roots and thousand year eggs, white tea and silk tofu, real Sichuan pepper and -- coffee?

Incredibly expensive coffee. At first, Will thought the price was off by a sliding digit, but then, the proprietor explained about it being rare and usually just exported or drunk by tourists, but there were no tourists, so for once, Will could buy the [whatever] coffee at a really competitive price.

So whatever the special thing about the coffee was, Will bought a small bag. Hannibal would know.

Having bought these disparate things, plus a bag of loquats, one durian, and a serious amount of tiny eggplants from the offending street vendor, Will whistled to the dog, and they went on their way home to the little thatched beach hut in the tourist compound, wondering how easily they had made it home As he approached, the dog suddenly bounced ahead to greet Hannibal. All it took, really, was a bed, a dog, and a place where Hannibal could cook, and they could put down roots for a while.

When Will stepped into the hut and turned the corner by the bathroom to the tiny tourist kitchen Hannibal had immediately adapted to his needs, the dog was already lying on his favourite rug, and Hannibal was washing his hands before continuing with making breakfast.

“Durian?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You do know that fruit is illegal in -- oh, my clever Will, you had her give you a bag printed with her contact, how very thoughtful of you.”

Yes. It would be her, then. Will didn’t hold with beating children, so his remorse at delivering her to Hannibal’s knives was woefully limited.

Hannibal sealed the durian into one of his four-flapped containers, and lit an incense stick before turning to the other bag, the one from the Chinese shop Will had discovered today.

Reverently, breathing deeply, he took each package out of the bag, turned it in his hands and gave a little anecdote about the product in question. “Of course you know, Will, that century eggs are only left to mature for -- oh, is this what I think it is?”

The coffee.

“I don’t know what that is,” Will admitted sheepishly. “The sales pitch was lost in translation. Something about a cat?”

“How very brilliant,” Hannibal said, opening the package. “You found some. Excellent.”

He took a deep lungful of air.

“Kopi luwak, sandalwood incense and the faint whiff of durian in the background,” he then mused. “It will always remind me of this unusual place, this very strange time. Let’s tell Dr. Morales that we’re ready to be rotated out, the next time he asks.”

Will sat on the rug beside the dog.

“This is where you explain to me what this actually is?” he said, taking off his glasses to wipe them, smiling up at Hannibal's happily smug face while he did.

Hannibal put all the groceries away, then got the coffee grinder out from the cupboard (of course there was one, hand-turned), filled it with the aromatic light brown beans, and started cranking the handle. He leaned back against the counter, dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt in a way he never would back home in Cuba (let alone in America), barefoot on the intentionally rustic floorboards, and wearing a rough brown striped apron that had come with the bungalow’s rudimentary kitchen.

And explained what kopi luwak was, while brewing it, in his element like a hawk plummeting from the sky to her prey.

It was just coffee ultimately, very good, rich and gentle coffee. No note of unpleasantness or sensationalism hinted at what the beans had actually been through.

“And with you having sourced it to such an amazing price,” Hannibal concluded, “we might have used up all of our dumb luck for this particular venture, and should go home.”

Which they did, in due course and with no undue haste, having bought three more packages of the coffee.

And without any more contact with the fruit seller. Pity, Will secretly thought to himself on the plane. What with the way she had laid into that one unlucky little boy, she’d almost have deserved being stewed with lotus roots.


End file.
